1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods, systems and computer program products for obtaining integrated voice access to a variety of personal information services such as contacts, calendar, tasks and e-mail services.
2. Background and Related Art
Communication is widely perceived to be an essential human need. It is generally thought that those who master the art of communication are often most likely to develop valuable relationships and otherwise expand their circle of influence in modern society. Perhaps for this reason, inventions that advance our ability to communicate are often perceived to have the largest contribution to our civilization.
The advent of the telephone allowed individuals to audibly communicate in real-time over vast distances. Conventional telephones were xe2x80x9chard-wiredxe2x80x9d in that the telephonic device relied on a wired connection to communicate over a telephonic network with other telephonic devices. Accordingly, conventional telephones were relatively fixed to a particular location. More recently, mobile telephones have developed thereby allowing individuals to communicate via telephone even if they are not in the proximity of a fixed telephone. Thus, mobile telephones have expanded the ability of individuals to engage in telephonic conversation.
Telephones may now be used not only to engage in telephone conversations, but also to access e-mail via audible voice or tone signals. For example, a call control server may present the telephone user with an audible menu list of items. The telephone user may select a menu item using the audible signal, thereby forwarding the server to a different state (e.g., another menu or a desired service). By navigating through the audible options, the telephone user may access e-mail.
Thus, conventional telephone control systems allow telephone users to access one type of personal information service (namely, e-mail) using audible signals. However, navigation between different types of information such as e-mail, calendar, contacts, and tasks is somewhat awkward in such conventional telephone control systems. Specifically, in order for a telephone user to navigate from an e-mail service to a calendar service, the telephone user would have to navigate out of the e-mail application, enter the calendar service, and navigate to the desired calendar service. Likewise, in order for a telephone user to navigate from a calendar service to an e-mail service, the telephone user would have to navigate out of the calendar application, enter an e-mail application, and navigate to the desired service.
Using a telephone to navigate through services has limitations. First, menu choices are not immediately apparent as they might be with a visual interface. Instead, the user is serially presented with an audible list of items that may be of interest to the telephone user. If the user has not previously memorized a particular list of items, the user must wait until the desired menu item is audibly presented. Also, since it is desirable to keep such a list as short as possible so as to minimize the time involved with presenting the entire menu list, the number of items audibly presented in a telephone menu might be less than the number of options listed using a visual interface.
Accordingly, it may take significantly more time and effort to navigate through an audible telephone interface, as compared to a visual interface. Such time and effort may be especially troublesome if the telephone user is having to engage in other activities such as driving a car or crossing the street while navigating. Thus, having separate applications that manage individual personal information services may be undesirable, especially when accessing such services through a telephone. Therefore, what is desired are methods, systems, and computer program products for integrating voice access to a variety of different types of personal information.
Methods, systems, and computer program products are described that allow a caller to voice access personal information in a manner that the caller may voice command an action to be performed in response to hearing a particular personal information item. The voice commanded action is then automatically performed even if the action requires access to another personal information item of a different type.
In accordance with the present invention, a voice access server receives a caller-issued voice command to hear a first item of personal information corresponding to a first personal information type. In one example, the voice access server receives a caller-issued voice command to access a particular calendar item. Then, the voice access server automatically accesses the requested information (the calendar item in the example), and audibly speaks the item to the caller.
The voice access server may then maintain a list of acceptable actions to take on the first item of personal information. In the example, several actions may be taken on a calendar item including, for example, obtaining further details about the calendar item, acting on the calendar item by accepting, tentatively accepting, or declining the calendar item, or replying to someone associated with the calendar item.
Some actions may require access to personal information of a different personal information type. For example, when replying to someone associated with the calendar item, it may be necessary to access a telephone number or e-mail address of the person associated with the calendar item. Thus, contacts information needs to be accessed in order to act on calendar information.
Rather than require the caller to voice navigate to the different type of personal information to retrieve the additional item of personal information, the voice access server automatically acquires the additional personal information. For example, the voice access server itself accesses the telephone number or e-mail address to which the reply is to be directed. Thus, the caller is alleviated from tedious voice navigation.
For example, in response to hearing a calendar item, a user may issue a voice command to reply to the organizer of the calendar item. Personal information of another type is then accessed to perform the action. For example, a contacts database may be consulted to acquire the e-mail address or telephone number of the organizer. This occurs without requiring the caller to manually navigate to a separate contacts application. Instead, this is performed automatically for the user. Accordingly, the user is able to perform convenient actions on a personal information item regardless of the type of personal information that needs to be accessed to perform the action.
Additional features and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by the practice of the invention. The features and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the instruments and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims. These and other features of the present invention will become more fully apparent from the following description and appended claims, or may learned by the practice of the invention as set forth hereinafter.